3) Evil

A third extreme axiological position remains to be examined: the affirmation of evil—that is, the view that cruelty, violence, and the suffering of others hold great value. This stance is radically distinct from eclecticism, as it does not extend to valuing the Whole. For the lover of evil, goodness, morality, the pursuit of others' happiness, and pity are utterly contemptible.

This position seems difficult to get to grips with, since many moral treatises rarely engage with authors who have affirmed the value of evil, such as Sade. Yet this ought to be a starting point, for we can only counter challenges to morality by first attending to their arguments. It is worth noting, in this regard, that works focused on the problem of evil often contain no reference to the immoralists.

What we are dealing with here is a very particular kind of evil—not the evil done out of ignorance, coercion, or without intent. Not the evil committed as a result of troubled integration into an unjust society that may have rejected the individual, as some sociologists suggest. Nor the evil that might stem from a physiological defect affecting one's judgement.
In short, we are considering unabashed evil—evil arising from a conscious, reasoned, and voluntary affirmation: 'Evil has great value', or 'Evil holds more value than good.' I shall refer to this position as 'radical evil'.

The very idea that someone could genuinely hold such a view—that they might love evil for its own sake—is rarely taken seriously, as sociological, biological, or psychoanalytical explanations of evil tend to dominate today. On these accounts, a love of evil is seen as a symptom—social or psychological—whose underlying cause must be addressed in order to 'cure' the individual, who is typically cast as a victim of an alienating society.

For the axiologist, however, the love of evil is an entirely coherent doctrine worthy of consideration, since the value of morality remains without foundation, and at present there is no substantial case against immorality that would allow us to conclude it has no value.
To dismiss evil as a mere symptom or pathology is to assume that no one can rationally, with full awareness, choose evil or love it for its own sake—that a person only succumbs to evil under compulsion, whether from society, childhood experience, or the atypical structure of their brain.

The axiologist, however, would maintain that, since no value is truly founded, the love of good is no more rational than the love of evil. While many harmful actions may well have psychoanalytical or sociological explanations, a specific form of evil must nonetheless be taken seriously: the one expressed in the axiological position that evil is the supreme value.

In the interest of neutrality, we must take this position seriously; otherwise, the immoralist could argue that axiological inquiry is inherently biased and therefore worthless. We must therefore, even if every instinct rebels against it and we recoil from all that this proposition entails, admit that perhaps evil possesses value…

Here again, it proves difficult to identify an author who explicitly defends this position—just as it was with eclecticism. Two names immediately suggest themselves: Nietzsche and Sade; yet, as we shall see, it does not appear that either can fully exemplify what we mean by the love of evil.